Black metal: the history of the emergence and the most influential bands

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Among admirers of metal music, the direction of black metal ("black metal") is quite popular, which literally suppresses the listener or viewer with its unprecedented outrageousness. This is connected with the music itself, and with the texts, and with the images in which the performers appear on stage, and even with their non-standard behavior in everyday life. Today, there are a large number of bands using this style, as well as directions that have crystallized from the original genre.

The history of black metal

Let's see how it all began, and why the music of this direction has received such crazy distribution and popularity all over the world. All researchers of the metal genre agree that the black metal style arose in the early 80s of the last century on the basis of trash metal, in which echoes of speed metal were clearly traced at the initial stage of formation.

The first and most famous founding band is considered to be the British team Venom, who released the album Black Metal in 1982, which gave the name to the newly appeared style.

To the first wave of blackMetal is sometimes also referred to as the Swedish band Bathory and Merciful Fate, who subsequently moved away from the style of black metal, or simply black, in terms of music, although they retained the direction of the lyrics and the use of absolutely incredible imagery on stage.

Characteristic features of music and lyrics

Now a few words about music and lyrics. The main emphasis in the style itself was placed on a dirty guitar sound. The guitar parts most often looked like a high-speed tremolo with a distortion effect. The drum parts used the so-called blast beat. All this was combined with piercing high-pitched vocals, although over time the parts became noticeably lower, and the vocalists switched from using screaming (piercing scream) to such a type of singing as a growl, reminiscent of the roar of an animal or demon.

As for the texts, in the initial version there was a clearly expressed anti-Christian direction, Satanism, mysticism, occultism and even paganism. True, now one can also come across such a paradoxical phenomenon as Christian black metal, which causes a lot of controversy among the musicians themselves and critics.

External paraphernalia of performers

But the outrageous images of musicians (especially at concerts) are clearly not the last. The performers themselves perform either in make-up or in masks, there is a sea of blood on the stage, severed animal heads, etc. And, of course, leather clothes and massive shoes with a huge number of rivets and spikes have become an integral attribute.

What is the sight of the musicians of Gorgoroth, Immortal or Cradle Of Filth, which, by the way, originally also played black metal. And the list is endless.

In addition, some musicians have gone even further. Many of them even distinguished themselves by setting fire to churches, which was extremely negatively perceived by civilized society, but it clearly spurred interest in their music from fans.

Varieties of style and the most famous black metal artists

Groups from the Scandinavian countries have probably had the most serious and strong influence on the development of the style. Especially performers from Sweden and Norway excelled in this.

Over time, the style has undergone quite a lot of transformations. Proto black (true black) and raw black styles are now considered true black. But on their basis, the division of music into subgenres began, among which today you can find such as melodic (groups Catamenia, Dissection), symphonic (Dimmu Borgir, Emperor, Arcturus), pagan (Burzum), viking metal (Bathory, Ancient Rites), depressive and atmospheric (Abyss Hate, Coldworld), ambient (Wolves In The Throne Room, Darkspace), epic (Summoning), industrial (Dodheimsgard, Samael), progressive (Enslaved, Agrypnie), black death metal (Behemoth, Sacramentum), doom black metal (Forgotten Tombs) etc.

As it is already clear, it is simply impossible to choose the best black metal from all this even incomplete list. It is better to listen to at least selected albums of several groups in order to draw conclusions. For example, you canrecommend an album by Mayhem called De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas or something else. As already clear, the choice here is quite wide.